The Administrator
U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Transit Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue SE
Washington, DC. 20590

FEB 12 2010

Mr. Steve Heminger
Executive Director
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
101 8th Street
Oakland, CA 94607

Ms. Dorothy Dugger
General Manager
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District
300 Lakeside Drive
P.O. Box 12688
Oakland, CA 94604-2688

Dear Mr. Heminger and Ms. Dugger:

I write in regard to the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project and the corrective action plan submitted by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) for the purpose of coming into compliance with the requirements of Title Vl of the Civil Rights Act.

As you are aware, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) received a formal complaint this past September 2009, alleging that BART had failed to complete a service equity analysis for the OAC Project. In December, FTA was able to confirm through a formal Title VI compliance review that the allegation was true and the complaint was well founded. Moreover, the compliance review revealed a number of other serious concerns related to BART's overall compliance with Title VI. As such, on January 15, 2010, I notified BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) that you could pursue the OAC project with funds provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) only under very limited circumstances. First, BART would be required to submit to the FTA a corrective action plan detailing how it would come into compliance with the requirements of Title VI. Second, in the event that BART could produce such a plan that was acceptable to the FTA, BART would still be prohibited from drawing any of the $70 million in ARRA funds budgeted for the project until it had successfully accomplished all of the requirements in the plan and become fully complaint with Title VI.

As part of my January 15 letter, I articulated FTA’s view that pursuing the OAC project under such conditions could endanger the ARRA funds being available for transit investments and job creation in the Bay area. Under the requirements of ARRA, any delay or failure on BART’s part that occured after March 5 would require me to reallocate the funding outside ofthe Bay area.

Continue Reading at PublicAdvocates.org:  Obama Administration Denies BART $70M in Stimulus Funds, Citing Civil Rights Failures